CognitiveDrone: A VLA Model and Evaluation Benchmark for Real-Time Cognitive Task Solving and Reasoning in UAVs

CognitiveDrone: A VLA Model and Evaluation Benchmark for Real-Time Cognitive T ask Solving and Reasoning in UA Vs Artem Lykov, V alerii Serpiva, Muhammad Haris Khan, Oleg Sautenkov, Artyom Myshlyaev, Grik Tadevosyan, Y asheerah Y aqoot, and Dzmitry Tsetserukou Abstract -- This paper introduces CognitiveDrone, a novel Vision-Language-Action (VLA) model tailored for complex Unmanned Aerial V ehicles (UA Vs) tasks that demand advanced cognitive abilities. Trained on a dataset comprising over 8,000 simulated flight trajectories across three key categories--Human Recognition, Symbol Understanding, and Reasoning--the model generates real-time 4D action commands based on first-person visual inputs and textual instructions. T o further enhance performance in intricate scenarios, we propose CognitiveDrone-R1, which integrates an additional Vision-Language Model (VLM) reasoning module to simplify task directives prior to high-frequency control. Experimental evaluations using our open-source benchmark, CognitiveDroneBench, reveal that while a racing-oriented model (RaceVLA) achieves an overall success rate of 31.3%, the base CognitiveDrone model reaches 59.6%, and CognitiveDrone-R1 attains a success rate of 77.2%. These results demonstrate improvements of up to 30% in critical cognitive tasks, underscoring the effectiveness of incorporating advanced reasoning capabilities into UA V control systems. Our contributions include the development of a state-of-the-art VLA model for UA V control and the introduction of the first dedicated benchmark for assessing cognitive tasks in drone operations.